I took a step away from code, opened up Adobe Illustrator and R, and did my best to visualize important topics like mortality, population, energy, and environment. It's amazing what you learn when you start digging into data. Did you know the average Niger woman will have seven children in her lifetime?

Some of the report is the graphs that you're used to while a couple were for fun and experimental. Check it out, and let me know what you think (and if you find any mistakes).

A Note About the Data

If you want some real data to work with (as opposed to the clean, fake kind), UNdata is an excellent place to find it. It's sparse, scattered, and oftentimes hard to figure out what the data are about - which is what you should expect. Although for some odd reason I wasn't expecting it to be so tricky to navigate. In any case, you'll notice that some of the pages show only select numbers for certain countries. It's most likely because there wasn't all that much data for that metric... or I just thought the factoid was interesting. More likely the former though. The further back in time you go, the more sparse the data gets.

Anyways, this was fun and I think I'll do it more often. It was nice to get back to where it really all began for me. Any suggestions for the next series of graphics?

23 Comments

Wow. Great layout and interesting charting. I am not a big fan of the fertility map though, the crossing lines confuse me and they are not even necessary after all. Or did I miss a joke there ;)
Other than that, I really like it!

This looks really nice however, some of the charting detracts from the intent for example the opposing bars for literacy between men and women obscures rather than highlights the difference between the groups since it is very challenging to see the differences in bar lengths when opposed that way (this is true for all the opposing bar charts). Additionally using stack bars to compare different time periods is misleading or misdirecting as stacks generally serve to illustrate ratios within one time slice rather than across multiple. I also second ayemoah’s comments on greenhouse gases. I understand you wanted to demonstrate some charting capabilities, but effective data visualization will prioritize the illustration or clarification a complex story above pretty charts. Even if it’s boring it’s better to pick the chart that meets this objective.

Overall this is great. I suffered a bit from chart fatique having to mentally switch thought processes between different styles of chart. Lots of mental “loading time”. /but it’s grea tto see someone make use of the data. And the greenhouse gas chart was my favorite.

Very well done. I’m actually a bit moved by the data being presented here. Sure, we can all talk about the different means of presenting the data, but let’s not forget the practical application that’s come from this- you’ve provided a great service to the world by turning all of that UN data into actual information.

I wish this was many, many pages longer. Any chance of expanding the small subset you’ve provided us with? Maybe some crowdsourcing opportunity here?